Sevens will be bigger than Bledisloe: Pulver

From left: James Horwill , Bill Pulver and Israel Folau launch the Rugby Super season at Sydney’s South Maroubra beach. Photo: Louise Kennerley

John Stensholt

Australian Rugby Union chief executive Bill Pulver has high hopes for sevens rugby, which he believes can be a commercial success and help the sport with its financial predicament.

Pulver also wants to introduce a domestic sevens competition that would run across summer, bridging the gap between the end of the new national club competition in early November and the beginning of Super Rugby in mid February.

He also wants to move the Australian leg of the Sevens World Series, held on the Gold Coast every October, to February. That may entail a shift to another city with the contract with the Queensland government expiring this year.

But the biggest potential lies with rugby sevens’ inclusion in the Olympic Games for the first time in 2016, both for women and men.

Pulver says that can drive a boost in participation, with a non-contact version of the sport coming, increase interest in the sport and ultimately commercial revenue. It could also mean a shifting in priorities in two years, with the potential to focus on Olympics above even the sacred Bledisloe Cup that year.

“The interesting question I’m going to put to the ARU board on the 24th of February in 2016,” Pulver says, “is: In 2016 you have three tests [against England], the Bledisloe Cup, a spring tour that is a grand slam tour that year and Super Rugby [and] you’ve got Olympics in August: what is the number one priority of rugby that year? I think it should be the Olympics. That’s my personal view. If you assess the commercial value and participation value of all those events, I think the Olympics should be the number one priority and that impacts on the decisions you make as you get closer.”

Pulver has also flagged an overhaul of the five Australian Super Rugby franchises, which could entail some closer co-operation or even merging at an administrative or back office level, to begin with at least.

The code could even seek to centrally contract players and coaches at Super Rugby level, as New Zealand does.

Pulver says discussions about an overhaul of rugby’s structure are well under way, and he wants the ARU to have more control over decision-making around the country, for now the domain of the states, which will help implement his plans. He likens it to a corporation with branch offices

“You get them together, diagnose the problem and go away with a plan to act on that,” he says. “But we don’t have any control over all that and there is some frustration at my level with the way the game is structured.”

Working on new blueprint

He says the ARU and the states are working on a new blueprint for the structure, which he hopes will be finalised this year.

With commercial income already on a solid footing – the ARU has already met its 2014 sponsorship budget and recently signed a Super Rugby sponsor, Asteron Life, for the first time in several years. Add to that a new broadcast deal and Pulver says rugby will be back in good health.

“It will take a couple of years. We want to get the business model behind Super Rugby sorted out. We will get the broadcast rights [for the entire code] done, which will bring more revenue into the game. We will get there.”

While the Super Rugby franchises are currently running at a loss, Pulver has high hopes for the teams on the field this year, with the Australian sides playing their first matches this coming weekend.

However, he admits that it is vital the likes of the Waratahs, often held up as the barometer of the sport, play winning and attractive rugby to boost their attendances, which have sagged to at least half of those it enjoyed a decade ago.

The ARU has also provided financial assistance to the Melbourne Rebels, which they took over last year after three seasons of private ownership under former chairman Harold Mitchell.

As well as cutting costs, Rebels CEO Rob Clarke says the franchises need to work hard to attract broader audiences, citing Twenty20 cricket as an example of something that may have upset the purists but has proven to be popular with a younger audience.

“We will be doing a lot of new things to enhance the match-day experience this year. We have to get past that ‘stale, pale and male’ fanbase we have now. We will die if we stick with just them.”

It is understood the Super Rugby competition, which also includes five clubs each from South Africa and New Zealand, could be expanded with another team in South Africa and one from Asia, potentially 2019 World Cup hosts Japan, and perhaps another from Argentina. The move is seen as one that could make the competition more attractive to broadcasters and sponsors.